


No wind

by shippityshipship



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, F/M, First Person Perspective, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other, and this is the result, and we had to write either a normal or a creative essay about HIV/AIDS, but I had to include something about modern day stuff too, from Angel's perspective, i decided to write fanfiction for my last assignment of medical school, it gets quite ooc because i had to meet the assignment criteria, so of course i made it based on Rent, this is a bit weird i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shippityshipship/pseuds/shippityshipship
Summary: The prompt was my last assignment of medical school: an essay about HIV/AIDS that could be creative. This is Angel's view of an afterlife for those who died from AIDS."A poignant essay, [shippityshipship] - well done." - my professor





	No wind

**Author's Note:**

> Now that my assignment has been submitted and graded, you too can enjoy a probably very out of character essay from Angel's perspective.
> 
> Content warning: it is implied that someone died by suicide. No detail about the event is gone into, but it's there, so please avoid if you need.

There’s no wind here.

It took a while for me to notice. Things were strange enough anyway; my cough was gone, my pain was gone, I could breathe again. No more chaotic and bizarre fever dreams either. No hospital beds. No judgemental hospital staff, nor the nice ones either. Heck, no hospital whatsoever.

No Tom sitting by my bed night and day.

So it was over. That took a bit of time to get used to.

~

There’s no wind here, but there are people.

There were a lot already here. Thousands, millions, I have no idea. Countless, at any rate. Someone said even Freddie Mercury ended up here, and he would, wouldn’t he? Because he was just like us – killed by the virus.

They let me settle in. Marco and his partner George welcomed me. I first met Marco on the drag scene, but George was already long gone. He ended up here years ago, when the press called it GRID instead of AIDS.

Marco clung on for quite a few more years, although he has no idea how. Apparently George was the healthier of the two of them, always eating right and exercising. Still, if it were a just and fair world neither of them would have ended up here – none of us would have ended up here.

So they gave me a place to stay, and people to talk to, and a community that looked and sounded like me. What more could someone want?

~~

There’s no wind here, but there is time.

It took so little of it before I was a Welcomer myself. Mimi arrived just a few short months after I did – she only just clung on to reach the 90s. I thought she’d been doing alright when I left. Turns out it’s hard to afford AZT (azidothymidine) when you’re busy paying The Man for D or C or X or whatever other code word she needed to get her thrill. It’s hard to afford rent too, and spending winter on the streets didn’t help her T cells.

It was two more years before we both welcomed Roger. His ex, April, was there too, although he wouldn’t have a bar of it. After all, she was the reason he ended up in this place.

A bit ironic, really, that they both got here the same way. The virus didn’t kill their cells, but it did kill their will to go on.

~~~ 

There’s no wind here, but there are voices blowing from across the lands.

In the last couple of decades there’s been fewer and fewer folks arriving from my adopted home. Those that still do aren’t the rich white folks, it’s the ones without insurance to afford their meds. Apparently, it’s now survivable if you’ve got the funds.

The main arrivals nowadays speak Arabic, or Swahili, or Berber, or Hausa, or any of the many variants of what their ancestors spoke and what colonisers dragged with them.

There’s language classes and cultural classes, and the smell of a thousand of spices and dishes lingering in the still air. I learned Afrikaans and French from my new neighbours. Roger teaches guitar and English, Mimi teaches dance, and I teach some of the new arrivals that no, they weren’t damned for the virus in their veins, none of us were. We all ended up here, right?

~~~~

There’s no wind here, but there are families.

Some are blood relatives. The ones who were each other’s link to ending up here.

Some await blood relatives. They speak of not being able to afford enough anti-retrovirals for everyone in the family so they went without. They talk of the day-long walk to the hospital to pick up their medications, and how it was along the walk that they missed a step and fell. They talk about giving their kids over to orphanages that might have more money to help, but they won’t get to see them again.

If their relatives arrive it’s bittersweet. They’re back together, but it means their efforts didn’t work. 

I hope Tom doesn’t end up here.

Some of the families here are made by circumstance, rather than blood. Children who ended up here, but their parents ended by some other cause, or not ended yet. Strangers come together, because everyone needs somebody.

I hadn’t had a family in the last world since they saw me trying on a dress, but there’s a bit less judgement now we’re already past the gates. There’s an old lady from South Africa who I now call Ouma, and a Nigerian man who has insisted we call him Baba. There’s also a young Indian woman who I dubbed my sister, at least in lived experience. She ended up on the streets when she put on a saree for the first time. We make an odd bunch, but this place was founded by the misfits and the outcasts of society: those who were shunned before the virus, and those who were shunned because of it.

Roger and Mimi end up with a kid, which surprised everyone, themselves included. Mimi joked that if they’d both stayed in the real world any kid probably would have come a surprise anyway, so a surprise kid should really be unsurprising given the circumstances. Still, the four-year-old Carla that we think was Mimi’s second cousin in the other world seems to be in safe hands.

~~~~~

There’s no wind here, but I’ll get a taste of it soon.

I’ve signed up to become a Collector, helping those leave the old world and come here. I might still look 25, but I’ve had another few decades of this not-life under my belt. It’s the senior residents here who get to go down, feel the wind on their skin, and welcome our new additions.

If you’d had told me 30 years ago whether people would still be dying AIDS, I’d have laughed and called you a pessimistic fool. They already had AZT when I died, and sure, it didn’t stop me from ending up here, but there was progress. The newer arrivals said most people who can get medications now live a long and healthy life as if they’d never had the virus to begin with.

But the world is strange, and unfair. There’s still so many who come over who just can’t get what they need to survive.

There’s no wind here, but I hope there’s winds of change below.


End file.
